Bolt Review

Disney debuts an animated adventure that's promisingly Pixar-ish.

Thanks to a string of commercial disappointments (or at most, underwhelming successes), Disney Animation has been in dire need of a revamp for several years. Notwithstanding the fact that computer-animated movies as a whole have dominated the family-film market for a decade or more, the looming presence of their cash-cow Pixar has overshadowed virtually every project during that time – which is no doubt one of the major reasons Pixar CEO and major-domo John Lasseter was appointed the chief creative officer for WDA a few years back.

Because of the labyrinthine production schedule of animated films, the official first effort under Lasseter's auspices hasn't arrived until now and perhaps unsurprisingly it bears many of the hallmarks of Pixar's classics. Unfortunately, however, it doesn't quite live up to their overall quality, which is why Bolt is a good but not great film which should earn Walt Disney Animation a deserved hit even if it won't quite return them to the heights of their own creative and commercial heyday.

John Travolta plays Bolt, the canine star of a hit TV series about a girl named Penny (Miley Cyrus) who escapes capture by the evil Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell) with the help of her superpowered dog. When a mix-up results in Bolt being shipped to the rough-and-tumble streets of New York, he begins to make a valiant trek back across the country to Hollywood for a reunion with Penny. Because he has been deluded into believing that everything in the show is real, Bolt targets an alley cat named Mittens (Susie Essman) as a minion of Dr. Calico and enlists her to help him get home. In the meantime, the duo picks up a TV-obsessed hamster named Rhino (Mark Walton) along the way who helps inspire Bolt to feats of greatness after he begins to realize that he is just an average dog.

Ironically, Bolt's biggest obstacle is not any particular Pixar movie or even Disney predecessor, but rather itself -- at least in the sense that it does its opening sequence so well, the rest of the movie just never quite sustains that level of excitement and energy. Directors Byron Howard and Chris Williams stage an elaborate Michael Bay-style action sequence in which Bolt fends off a phalanx of attackers as he and Penny make their way to the airport, and it's not merely a broad parody or even homage. The scene magnificently combines stunt work, "special effects" and humor in a way that trumps even Bay's best work, and suggests the possibilities afforded to action directors if they were to command a world composed entirely of CGI. While the rest of the film sufficiently (and satisfyingly) examines Bolt's ensuing identity crisis, the story's anthropomorphized animal conventions just don't achieve the same sort of real world credibility.

At the same time, the rest of the film works far better than it has any real right to given audiences' familiarity with stories like Bolt's. Likely due in no small part to Lasseter's "filmmaker first" approach to storytelling, there's a conceptual cohesion to both the characters and plot that surpasses the committee thinking of many of its non-Pixar predecessors; where in other recent Disney animated films, sequences arose seemingly out of a need for visual action or merely some sort of set piece, here all of the little details and idiosyncrasies are part of a whole. For example, Bolt's "powers" in the TV series return to him in more modest but emotionally effective form once he comes to terms with being an ordinary dog, which provides both an entertaining callback to earlier scenes and a thematic connection between his different lives.

Further, excepting that crisp opening sequence, the animation is uniquely painterly, featuring a softer and more accessible look that evokes the imagery of classic Disney films with its preponderance of brush strokes and hand-drawn textures. But ultimately, it's the character rather than color or animation details that are most important. From the olfactory buffet that Bolt enjoys when he first sticks his head out of the window of a moving car to the indefatigable energy and optimism that Rhino calls upon to inspire his hero when he's at his lowest point, the filmmakers get it right. Overall, Bolt is smart, insightful and surprisingly resonant – so much so, in fact, that some audiences are likely to mistake it for a Pixar film, even if its greatest legacy may be its ability to tap into the potential of live-action films rather than just animated ones.